Seductio
by Fialleril
Summary: He learns that he must be free of attachment. Anakin's journey from TPM to AOTC.


**Disclaimer: **Everything belongs to George.  
**Notes: **Originally written for the "seduction" challenge at the swficchallenge comm on LJ. This fic was inspired by the meaning of the Latin _seductio_, to lead astray. Because when I think seduction, I think Latin roots.

* * *

_**Seductio**_

It begins this way: with two boys, young and the very opposite of carefree, invisible bonds planted under their skin. They don't know what freedom means, but they know what it's _not_, and someday, they are going to free the slaves.

It's a set scene, a steady, unchanging reality. They grow older, and the dream grows with them. And then, suddenly, a catalyst: an old, weather-beaten Jedi in disguise, who offers one of the boys his freedom and, more than that, the chance to become a Jedi himself.

_Jedi _is a strange word in a strange dialect, but this is what it means, so far as they can tell: it means _free _and _powerful _and _having agency_. It means _having the ability to free the slaves_.

But there is a choice. The old Jedi can take the boy, but he cannot free his friend (his _brother_). He cannot free their mother.

The boy hesitates. He holds the weight of his own freedom, his chance at becoming _Jedi_, against the weight of leaving (_abandoning_). But his mother and brother encourage him to go. He is their chance. He agrees, choking, and promises that he will return some day. He will come back when he is _Jedi_, and he will free all the slaves.

The goodbye is short. There are no tears. The boy looks at his mother and brother and thinks, _There is no me without you._

He turns and walks away, but he promises that he will return some day.

* * *

It goes on in this way: the boy is apprenticed to a Jedi. He learns to read and write in Basic. He practices writing his name in the strange new letters. He learns new words, and forgets the old. He learns about mathematics and physics and geology and diplomacy. He learns to pilot starships. He learns how to fight. When he is fourteen years old he learns how to kill.

He learns that he must be free of attachment. He is not permitted to write to his mother and brother. He does not speak in his native language, because there is no one here who speaks his dialect. He learns to use words like "master" and "sir" and "my lady" and not think about the implications. He learns that his duty as a Jedi is to the Republic.

He learns to stop asking about slavery, because the Republic has so many more pressing concerns, and his duty is to go where he is most needed.

* * *

And then, when the boy is nineteen, another catalyst: he has a dream.

The dream sends him to the place that was once home, in search of his mother. He doesn't know where his brother is, anymore, but there is no time to find him anyway; the urgency of the search for his mother consumes him.

And he does find her. Not a catalyst, this, but a narrative climax, a moment of truth. He finds her, and she dies in his arms.

He doesn't know what to do. His mother is dead and he has come back but there were so many things he meant to do once, and he can't even remember now what they were. He feels lost. He feels like a traitor. He can't remember why.

So he falls back on what he's learned. Not all of it, no. (He can hear, in the back of his mind, the old whisper, _Master wouldn't approve._) But he's learned how to fight, and how to kill, and he's good at it, now. So he falls back on that.

(There is a word for this, in the old language, but it's been so very long since he's spoken it. He can't remember what it was.)

* * *

When it's over, the boy buries his mother. He leaves his old home less than an hour later. There is no reason to stay. There is nothing here for him anymore.

* * *

And that is how it ends. Not for the rest of the galaxy, not for the Republic, no. But for the boy's home, for the boy's brother who never saw him again, that is how it ends.

(The word the boy could not remember is _keekta-du_. It's a word that doesn't translate exactly. The closest approximation in Basic might be _one who has forgotten where he comes from_.)


End file.
